[Sinking your teeth into economic evaluations: application and importance in oral health]. / Economische evaluaties aan de tand gevoeld: belang en toepassing in de mondzorg.

Health economics deals with issues about the use of scarce resources in healthcare. An important branch of health economics concerns economic evaluations, which consist of a comparison of the costs and effects of 2 or more treatments. The role and importance of economic evaluations in oral care are increasing but are not yet as evident as in other areas of healthcare (such as pharmacy). An economic evaluation provides a broad picture of the costs and health benefits of a particular diagnostic or treatment strategy, resulting in a cost-effectiveness ratio (expressed, for example, as costs per quality-adjusted life year gained). The results are intended for use in policy-making, such as decisions about in- or exclusion from the basic benefits package. To date, only a limited number of economic evaluations of oral care have been carried out, mainly focused on caries. It is important to be able to demonstrate that the treatment provided in oral care is cost-effective. Oral care may put itself in a vulnerable position in the distribution of scarce resources when the costeffectiveness of its treatments is uncertain.

The hospital costs associated with acute paediatric burn injuries.

BACKGROUND: Ongoing rationing of healthcare threatens services that are well established, and cripples others that desperately require investment. Burn, for one, remains a neglected epidemic in South Africa (SA), despite the magnitude of the problem. OBJECTIVE: To identify the prominent components contributing to the cost of hospital admission with paediatric burn injury. Determining the true costs of specialist services is important, so that resources can be allocated appropriately to achieve the greatest possible impact. METHODS: A retrospective study was undertaken over 1 year to determine patient demographics and injury details of 987 patients admitted with burn injuries to Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital, Cape Town, SA. The in-hospital financial records of 80 randomly selected patients were examined. This was followed by a prospective study to determine the financial implications of four cost drivers, i.e. bed cost per day, costs of medications received, costs of dressings for wound care, and costs of surgical intervention. A random selection of 37 dressing changes (in 31 paediatric patients) and 19 surgical interventions was observed, during which all costs were recorded. RESULTS: As expected, severe flame burns are responsible for more prolonged hospital stays and usually require surgical intervention. Scald burns comprise the greatest proportion of burn injuries, and therefore account for a considerable part of the hospital's expenditure towards burn care. CONCLUSION: While community programmes aiming to prevent burn injuries are important, this study motivates for the implementation of accessible ambulatory services in low-income areas. This strategy would enable the burn unit to reduce its costs by limiting unnecessary admissions, and prioritising its resources for those with more severe burn injuries.

Emergency repair of inguinal hernia in the premature infant is associated with high direct medical costs.

PURPOSE: Inguinal hernia repair is frequently performed in premature infants. Evidence on optimal management and timing of repair, as well as related medical costs is still lacking. The objective of this study was to determine the direct medical costs of inguinal hernia, distinguishing between premature infants who had to undergo an emergency procedure and those who underwent elective inguinal hernia repair. METHODS: This cohort study based on medical records concerned premature infants with inguinal hernia who underwent surgical repair within 3 months after birth in a tertiary academic children's hospital between January 2010 and December 2013. Two groups were distinguished: patients with incarcerated inguinal hernia requiring emergency repair and patients who underwent elective repair. Real medical costs were calculated by multiplying the volumes of healthcare use with corresponding unit prices. Nonparametric bootstrap techniques were used to derive a 95 % confidence interval (CI) for the difference in mean costs. RESULTS: A total of 132 premature infants were included in the analysis. Emergency surgery was performed in 29 %. Costs of hospitalization comprised 65 % of all costs. The total direct medical costs amounted to €7418 per premature infant in the emergency repair group versus €4693 in the elective repair group. Multivariate analysis showed a difference in costs of €1183 (95 % CI -1196; 3044) in favor of elective repair after correction for potential risk factors. CONCLUSION: Emergency repair of inguinal hernia in premature infants is more expensive than elective repair, even after correction for multiple confounders. This deserves to be taken into account in the debate on timing of inguinal hernia repair in premature infants.

Dairy foods and osteoporosis: an example of assessing the health-economic impact of food products.

UNLABELLED: Osteoporosis has become a major health concern, carrying a substantial burden in terms of health outcomes and costs. We constructed a model to quantify the potential effect of an additional intake of calcium from dairy foods on the risk of osteoporotic fracture, taking a health economics perspective. INTRODUCTION: This study seeks, first, to estimate the impact of an increased dairy consumption on reducing the burden of osteoporosis in terms of health outcomes and costs, and, second, to contribute to a generic methodology for assessing the health-economic outcomes of food products. METHODS: We constructed a model that generated the number of hip fractures that potentially can be prevented with dairy foods intakes, and then calculated costs avoided, considering the healthcare costs of hip fractures and the costs of additional dairy foods, as well as the number of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost due to hip fractures associated with low nutritional calcium intake. Separate analyses were done for The Netherlands, France, and Sweden, three countries with different levels of dairy products consumption. RESULTS: The number of hip fractures that may potentially be prevented each year with additional dairy products was highest in France (2,023), followed by Sweden (455) and The Netherlands (132). The yearly number of DALYs lost was 6,263 for France, 1,246 for Sweden, and 374 for The Netherlands. The corresponding total costs that might potentially be avoided are about 129 million, 34 million, and 6 million Euros, in these countries, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: This study quantified the potential nutrition economic impact of increased dairy consumption on osteoporotic fractures, building connections between the fields of nutrition and health economics. Future research should further collect longitudinal population data for documenting the net benefits of increasing dairy consumption on bone health and on the related utilization of healthcare resources.

Workshop Report: concepts and methods in the economics of nutrition--gateways to better economic evaluation of nutrition interventions.

Improving health through better nutrition of the population may contribute to enhanced efficiency and sustainability of healthcare systems. A recent expert meeting investigated in detail a number of methodological aspects related to the discipline of nutrition economics. The role of nutrition in health maintenance and in the prevention of non-communicable diseases is now generally recognised. However, the main scope of those seeking to contain healthcare expenditures tends to focus on the management of existing chronic diseases. Identifying additional relevant dimensions to measure and the context of use will become increasingly important in selecting and developing outcome measurements for nutrition interventions. The translation of nutrition-related research data into public health guidance raises the challenging issue of carrying out more pragmatic trials in many areas where these would generate the most useful evidence for health policy decision-making. Nutrition exemplifies all the types of interventions and policy which need evaluating across the health field. There is a need to start actively engaging key stakeholders in order to collect data and to widen health technology assessment approaches for achieving a policy shift from evidence-based medicine to evidence-based decision-making in the field of nutrition.

Nutrition economics - characterising the economic and health impact of nutrition.

There is a new merging of health economics and nutrition disciplines to assess the impact of diet on health and disease prevention and to characterise the health and economic aspects of specific changes in nutritional behaviour and nutrition recommendations. A rationale exists for developing the field of nutrition economics which could offer a better understanding of both nutrition, in the context of having a significant influence on health outcomes, and economics, in order to estimate the absolute and relative monetary impact of health measures. For this purpose, an expert meeting assessed questions aimed at clarifying the scope and identifying the key issues that should be taken into consideration in developing nutrition economics as a discipline that could potentially address important questions. We propose a first multidisciplinary outline for understanding the principles and particular characteristics of this emerging field. We summarise here the concepts and the observations of workshop participants and propose a basic setting for nutrition economics and health outcomes research as a novel discipline to support nutrition, health economics and health policy development in an evidence and health-benefit-based manner.

Criteria for determining a basic health services package. Recent developments in The Netherlands.

The criterion of medical need figures prominently in the Dutch model for reimbursement decisions as well as in many international models for health care priority setting. Nevertheless the conception of need remains too vague and general to be applied successfully in priority decisions. This contribution explores what is wrong with the proposed definitions of medical need and identifies features in the decision-making process that inhibit implementation and usefulness of this criterion. In contrast to what is commonly assumed, the problem is not so much a failure to understand the nature of the medical need criterion and the value judgments involved. Instead the problem seems to be a mismatch between the information regarding medical need and the way in which these concerns are incorporated into policy models. Criteria--medical need, as well as other criteria such as effectiveness and cost-effectiveness--are usually perceived as "hurdles," and each intervention can pass or fail assessment on the basis of each criterion and therefore be included or excluded from public funding. These models fail to understand that choices are not so much between effective and ineffective treatments, or necessary and unnecessary ones. Rather, choices are often between interventions that are somewhat effective and/or needed. Evaluation of such services requires a holistic approach and not a sequence of fail or pass judgments. To improve applicability of criteria that pertain to medical need we therefore suggest further development of these criteria beyond their original binary meaning and propose meaningful ways in which these criteria can be integrated into policy decisions.

['Necessity' determined on the basis of disease severity when prioritising health care interventions]. / Ziektelast als uitwerking van het criterium 'noodzakelijkheid' bij het maken van keuzen in de zorg.

In the Netherlands, the Priorities in Healthcare [Keuzen in de Zorg] Committee proposed that the prioritisation of healthcare interventions should in part be based on the criterion 'necessity'. However, this criterion has hardly ever been used. It was proposed that 'necessity' should be defined in terms of disease severity. This concept examines the fraction of expected quality-adjusted life years (QALY) that a patient will lose if the condition concerned is not treated. The following two possible applications for healthcare policy were studied. Firstly, relatively necessary care could be fully reimbursed, whereas less necessary care would only be reimbursed in part. Secondly, for relatively necessary interventions a lower cost-effectiveness threshold (relatively high costs per QALY for necessary care) could be accepted. In these cases the concept of disease severity provides a new feasible interpretation of the criterion 'necessity'.

The cost-effectiveness of neonatal surgery and subsequent treatment for congenital anorectal malformations.

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: The progress made in all fields of medicine, including neonatal surgery, has contributed to the rise in healthcare costs. Although neonatal surgery may provide survival gains, these could be at the expense of worse quality of life caused by impairment after surgery. For example, congenital anorectal malformations (CAM) are complex anomalies, and the surgical techniques available have their limitations in achieving continence. It therefore seems justifiable to consider what the effects of treatment are in relation to the costs. Evidence of the cost-effectiveness of neonatal surgery, however, is lacking. METHODS: The authors analyzed both direct and indirect, medical and nonmedical costs in patients who had undergone treatment for CAM. Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) were measured using the EuroQol EQ-5D questionnaire. Descriptive quality-of-life data were collected using a disease-specific questionnaire and a medical consumption questionnaire. RESULTS: Mean costs of treatment are calculated at Euro 31,593. Treated CAM patients suffer stool difficulties and their medical consumption is relatively high. The EQ-5D, however, shows that the quality of life of CAM patients is only slightly lower than that of the general population (0.88 v 0.93). Treatment results in a gain of 12.7 QALYs. Costs per QALY of treatment for CAM amount to Euro 2,482. CONCLUSIONS: Treatment for CAM has a favorable cost-effectiveness ratio compared with other evaluated healthcare programs. Bearing in mind the increasing political interest in evidence-based and cost-effective medicine, the results are encouraging.